The Compensation Advisory Organization of Michigan is Michigan's private, not-for-profit workers' compensation advisory organization, created in its current form in 1983. It collects and analyzes premium and loss data for member carriers and regulators, develops advisory class pure premiums and rating values for the voluntary market, and administers the Michigan Workers' Compensation Placement Facility.

Does Michigan use NCCI rates?

No. Michigan uses CAOM as its advisory organization instead of NCCI. CAOM develops Michigan's advisory class pure premiums and rating values, and carriers build their own rates on top of those figures. Verify the Michigan classification and pure premium through CAOM rather than an NCCI figure from another state.

What is a pure premium in Michigan?

A CAOM advisory pure premium is the loss, loss-adjustment-expense, and loss-based-expense cost per $100 of payroll for a classification, before a carrier adds its own expenses and profit. It is advisory, so each Michigan carrier converts the pure premium into its own rate — which is why premiums for the same class code differ by insurer.

CAOM: Compensation Advisory Organization of Michigan

Last verified: 2026-07-25 · Reviewed against the bureau's official filings and Michigan rating law — how we verify

Bureau Overview

State served

Michigan

Rate-making model

Advisory pure premiums · carrier rating

Current effective date

2026-01-01

Michigan is not an NCCI state, and January 1 is still the right date. CAOM, acting as the statutory Data Collection Agency, issues Michigan's statewide average advisory pure premiums "effective January 1 — new and renewal business only" each year, and its circular letters are titled by that date year after year. The Data Collection Agency Board of Governors approves the indication each July at the Department of Insurance and Financial Services in Lansing; the 2025 meeting was held on July 30, 2025.

Official site

caom.com

The Compensation Advisory Organization of Michigan (CAOM) is a private, not-for-profit association of the insurers licensed to write workers' compensation in Michigan. Created in its current form on January 1, 1983, it collects, processes, and analyzes workers' compensation premium, loss, and policy data for its member carriers and for state regulators — the advisory role NCCI fills in most other states.

CAOM develops advisory class pure premiums and associated rating values for carriers to use in the voluntary market. A pure premium represents loss, loss-adjustment expense, and loss-based expense per $100 of payroll; because it is advisory, each carrier builds its own rate on top of it. CAOM also administers the Michigan Workers' Compensation Placement Facility, the state's residual market for employers that cannot obtain coverage in the voluntary market.

How Michigan pricing works

Michigan's price to an employer starts from CAOM's advisory pure premium for the classification, which each carrier converts into a rate by adding its own expenses and profit and then applying the employer's experience modification and any scheduled credits or debits. Because the pure premium is advisory rather than a mandated rate, quotes vary from carrier to carrier for the same classification.

For Michigan's modeled per-class benchmarks and current filing context, see the Michigan workers' compensation rates hub.

Sources

Compensation Advisory Organization of Michigan — About CAOM (retrieved 2026-07-25)
Compensation Advisory Organization of Michigan — official site (retrieved 2026-07-25)

Frequently Asked Questions

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Rates shown are estimates, not quotes.

Figures are a modeled benchmark — a national class-code base-rate catalogue scaled by a per-state index — and they are not reconciled to the loss costs your state has actually filed. We measured the gap in August 2026 and published it: against the two regulators we could retrieve, our figures ran a median 2.3x the filed loss cost in Georgia and about 10x for one Texas class code. Read the calibration measurement before relying on a number here. Treat these as a relative indicator for ranking states and class codes against each other, not as an estimate of what you will pay.

Your actual premium depends on carrier rate deviations, experience modification factor, schedule credits, payroll, claims history, and underwriting. WorkersCompCost.com is not a licensed insurance broker — confirm binding rates with a licensed agent in your state.